IMDb launches trivia game app on iPhone

IMDb has launched a new iPhone and iPod Touch app featuring a movies, TV and celebrity trivia game, as part of the website's growing portfolio of mobile services.

The IMDb Trivia app marks the first real foray into games for the movie database website that attracts 110 million unique visitors every month across all devices.

Available now for free via the iTunes App Store, the trivia app brings IMDb to life with a range of trivia questions linked to the database of more than 2 million movies, TV shows and celebrities.

The teasers are indexed to certain categories, such as 'Hollywood Hits'; 'Family Movies'; 'TV Favorites'; and 'Blockbuster Films', while each question is accompanied by a trivia fact.

Users are able to share their scores on Facebook with others, while the app is linked to the Game Center feature in the iOS operating system for online leaderboards.

Col Needham, the film enthusiast who founded IMDb in 1989 and is still the site's chief executive, said that the trivia app was developed after he observed the increasing popularity of trivia services on IMDb.

Users now spend more than 4 million hours on IMDb.com's trivia pages every year, and fans were also making up their own movie and TV trivia games on the IMDb message boards.

This led Needam to see a "clear customer need" for a trivia application for mobile devices, but he has also observed a "very, very exciting" opportunity in general in the mobile business.

An optimised version of IMDb is already available as an app for iPhone, iPad, Android phones, Android tablets, and Windows Phone, along with a mobile-optimised website.

Today, the company announced that there have been more than 26 million installs of IMDb mobile apps across all devices worldwide.

The IMDb app on iPhone and iPad has now been installed by 15 million users, while the Android app has racked up 10 million downloads since its launch in June 2010.

The movie database now attracts 25 million monthly visitors across all mobile properties, and is on track to show 200% year-on-year growth by the end of this year.

Kintan Brahmbhatt, the head of mobile at IMDb, said that the trivia app will be funded by users purchasing additional question packs for 99 cents (63p). But he also said that there could be scope for running advertising on the service in the future.

Brahmbhatt said that the trivia app is first coming to iOS, as that is where the "momentum" is at the moment for the firm's mobile strategy.

There are plans in place for a launch on Android and other operating systems in the future should the demand arise.